You'll forgive me, I hope, for having tried to weasel out of this discussion without having to introduce the term 'propaganda', which is so loaded down with con

You'll forgive me, I hope, for having tried to weasel out of this discussion without having to introduce the term 'propaganda', which is so loaded down with connotations at this point as to be practically useless. I hope it's uncontroversial to state that the most effective way of steering political opinion is to establish a method of determining the terms in which political discussion is undertaken. (It should certainly be uncontroversial to state this to a progressive, whose political movement has more precisely formalized the concept than any other in recent history!) In this line, one might promulgate a formula by which human agency is as much as possible elided from discussion of one particular method by which humans have been known to kill one another, in favor of the unstated but strong implication -- yes, that word again -- that the essential problem lies in the method, rather than in the untrammelled urge to kill. "Killed by an AK-47" is a sterling example of the type. You argue that "everyone knows" what is meant by that formula, and I wouldn't presume to disagree with such a trivially obvious statement. But, in that case, I'm forced to wonder why anyone bothers with the obfuscation at all! What does it add, to the attempt to reason as accurately as possible about a phenomenon in order to enact laws intended to control it to the benefit of all, to use a form of words which suggests by its structure the absurd thought of a firearm floating around willy-nilly shooting people of its own accord? To whose benefit is this absurdity deployed?